smarter than i look

Reading!!

2009-02-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

For anyone that knows me they know that I love to read. In fact I can't even fall asleep at night without reading at least a couple of chapters in a book. So the following is a note I stole from my cousin Michelle's facebook page. (Thanks Michelle) But i decided to mark the ones I have read and add what I thought about some of the books.

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
yes i'm afraid i have read this book...and no not by choice it was for a class, and no I will never ever read it again!!!
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
once again yes i've read it...not by choice, all though it makes you realize how much a girl will overlook the flaws in a guy because they think they love him.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
yep every single one, and loved every single minute of it. Are they the best books ever written, nope not at all, but they sure are fun to read.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
love love love this book, if you've never read it, you need to!! I mean where you find out who Boo Radley really is and what he is really like is just AMAZING!!
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
ugh...hated this one, had to read it for a class, in my opinion one of the most overated pieces of literature.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
Big brother is watching, what more needs to be said. fun little book to read, especially for today.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
The first two books are good, the last one...meh...you can really see his athiesm coming through which more than anything made me annoyed while reading the last book.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
so didn't realize beth was going to die....yeah traumatic experience for a 13 year old!!!
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian FaulkX
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
loved this book as well
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey NiffeneggerX
I actually enjoyed this book quite a bit how a man's romance with his wife occurs over time, it's a really good story.
20 Middlemarch - George EliotX
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret MitchellX
yeah i've read it, by my own choice, so what!!!
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles DickensX
24 War and Peace - Leo TolstoyX
long, long, long, long book!! and he keeps calling his characters by different names so the book just gets annoying by the end!!
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas AdamsX
"Don't panic." "The Answer to the Great Question…Of Life, the Universe and Everything…Is…Forty-two."
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn WaughX
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor DostoyevskyX
ugh...that's about all I can say about this one!!
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
The story itself is a fun read...the author was a sick sick man!!!
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth GrahameX
31 Anna Karenina - Leo TolstoyX
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS LewisX
one of the first fantasy series that i ever read. Love them. and CS Lewis is just an amazing author, random side note JRR Tolkien helped convert him to christianity!
34 Emma - Jane AustenX
NOT BY CHOICE!!!
35 Persuasion - Jane AustenX
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS LewisX
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
This book i thought was ok, but i didn't find it impacting me as much as some of my friends said it would...i just moslty thought it was an ok story.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De BernieresX
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA MilneX
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
I thought this one was personally way overrated. it was an interesting book, but the writing itself kind of sucked, and lacked quite a bit of flow!
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
Again one of the more over rated pieces of literature, i've only read it in spanish, but after reading it I felt that I had just waded through filth.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John IrvingX
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie CollinsX
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM MontgomeryX
yeah...all of them, so what, shut-up!!!
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas HardyX
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwanX
51 Life of Pi - Yann MartelX
52 Dune - Frank HerbertX
this was also one of the first sci-fi books i ever read.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella GibbonsX
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram SethX
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz ZafonX
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous HuxleyX
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X
this one was ok, i found myself struggling to finish it though, it had a lot of really really coarse language!!
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
"George, tell me about the rabbits George." Great book!!
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna TarttX
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
One of my all time favorite books!!! Just great!!!
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas HardyX
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman RushdieX
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram StokerX
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill BrysonX
75 Ulysses - James JoyceX
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia PlathX
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur RansomeX
such a fun children's book! This one brings back a lot of memories!
78 Germinal - Emile ZolaX
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace ThackerayX
80 Possession - AS ByattX
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David MitchellX
83 The Color Purple - Alice WalkerX
didn't really love this one, i read it, but found myself being angry a lot of the time at the characters!
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo IshiguroX
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton MistryX
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch AlbomX
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton X
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
I'll have to agree with Michelle on this one, i hated this book, honestly thought of it as just a bunch of rubbish!
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
I think I was 8 the first time I read this...yeah didn't really understand a thing about the story, but now i find myself enjoying it more.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain BanksX
94 Watership Down - Richard AdamsX
This book led me to a whole great series of books called Redwall, by Brian Jaques!!
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy TooleX
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil ShuteX
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre DumasX
I think this book is my 2nd all time favorite book, i've read it at least once a year since i was 10!!!
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
I love love love reading Roald Dahl!! some of the funnest books to read! From james and the giant peach, to matilda, to Danny champion of the world!!! Just great great books
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X
Not much needs to be said about this one, just an amzing story of redemtion!!!

Anyway as you can see i've pretty much read most of these books, like I said i just love to read, and I read really really fast which leads to me having read a ton of books. I wish a few of my other favorites were on this list thought, like "enders game" by orson scott card, but hey the list is pretty good.

On being sick

2009-01-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

So i figured it was about time to update this thing. Yes i know my that i've only been writing in this thing every other month, but lets be honest i'm really not that interesting anyway. :)

So as i write this i'm sick with the flu. Have been now since tuesday, which totally sucks. I hate being sick. Absolutely hate it, mostly because i'm the biggest baby as soon as i get the sniffles. "mom, i'm sick." Well since i've been sick for some reason the past couple of days i've started thinking about my mortality. Yeah i know that's kind of a downer thought, but hear me out for a sec. By thinking about my mortality i've more started thinking about the number of times i've been really sick, which includes broken bones and stitches. Let's just say that number is really really high. Let me give you a rundown really fast.

SERIOUS ILLNESSESS
Dengue fever -- 2 times on my mission
had a fever of 102 for 7 days, but kept working until i stood up and passed out, then my comp forced me to stay in bed.

Amoebas (or other forms of parasitic infestation in my body) -- 9 times
yeah lets just say having a parasite in your body is NEVER EVER fun and leave it at that.

Severe Dehydration/heat stroke -- 3 times
who knew it wasn't a good idea to fast without drinking water in 120 degree weather with 100% humidity?

BROKEN BONES
14
each one has a very funny story associated with it, ask me about them sometime and maybe i'll tell you a funny story.

number that were actually put into cast
3 -- i hate cast they itch

# OF STITCHES
~450
once again, each one has a funny story associated with it, usually involving me doing something very very stupid....but very very fun. Man i loved my childhood!

# OF TIMES I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN STITCHES
To many times to count
Nothing beats a handy bottle of superglue

Anyway that is a very small sampling of what i've put my body through over the course of my life time. Trust me there is a lot more i could have written, but my mom reads my blog as well and I don't want her to panic. "Love you mom" So yeah i've run my body through the ringer, but hey I can honestly say that i know of very few people who have done or had as much fun doing the things that i have done in my life. What's that old saying "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.." or in my case, breaks a bone, needs stitches.

Childhood Memories

2008-11-18T21:05:00.001-08:00

So i decided to kind of go along the lines of Jon's blog http://r-is-for-rocket.blogspot.com
and go back to some fun childhood memories of growing up in Georgia. So for those of you who don't know I grew up in this little podunk town called Byron. Our house was actually out in the suburbs of this little podunk town, so you can imagine we pretty much lived in the boonies.

Anyway growing up our house sat on just about 80 acres of land, where as kids we would spend hours out there, getting into who knows what, and doing who knows what. Let's just say we always had a lot of fun just playing. Well one day, my little brother and I decided to take our go-kart out into the field behind our house to just drive around and have fun. Well my safety conscious mom told Jon, my little brother, to wear a helmet as we went out driving....Why she didn't care to tell me to wear one still kind of bothers me....but anyway she told Jon to wear a helmet, more than likely do to the fact that on occasion i would turn rather sharply and "flip" Jon out of the go-kart, and kind of drive over him a little bit.... He never really got hurt so it wasn't ever that big of a deal, but man would he whine and cry when it would happen.

Well after we get all situated, we began our fun drive out into the field. Now let me describe this field to you, it was pretty much about 45 acres of wide open grass land, with hills and valleys. Pretty much the most perfect place to drive around in, that is as long as you avoided the cows in the field. Yes there were cows there, they weren't ours, we just let another farmer use the field to basically store them. Well with cows comes...cow patties. If you were ever running around out in the field you always had to be careful because it was literally like a mine field out there. If you made one wrong step chances are you would either go sliding for a few feet from the juices in the patty, or you would get splashed up the pant let. Both of these were never really a fun option. So now that we've started driving in the field, i just take of trying to get as much speed as possible, because well, why not?

We had been riding the go-kart for maybe 5 minutes when all of a sudden Jon begins screaming like a banshee. My first thought is what the heck is he screaming for, i haven't even tried to flip him out of the go-kart, so i glance over at him. This helmet that he was wearing had a face shield to it to protect the wearer from flying objects, such as bugs, and little rocks. Kind of like the picture here https://scootercityinc.3dcartstores.com/assets/images/helmets/20_wine.jpg
Well as we were driving we had happened to drive through one of those really juicy cow patties. Somehow the tire when it hit the patty whipped it up into the air...straight under the face shield of Jon's helmet, hence the screaming. He literally had a helmet full of cow manure with it still on his head. Yeah i was laughing so hard, i had to stop driving before we wrecked. The really funny part was that if he hadn't been wearing the helmet chances are the patty would have just been flung over his head and missed him, but safety first so Jon got a face full of warm juicy goodness. Ah memories, so much fun. :)